"Hey, that draft you sent me was just not your best work. I threw it in the trash. You can do better. Why don't you start over with it and send me a draft by next week? Maybe you should stick with a subject you know more about."

In Trash: A Story of Uncertainty, you play a grad student with dealines looming over your shoulder. It's just your thesis, no big deal, right? Well your chair thinks that what you've written is completely worthless, for no specific reason, and gives you a week to write a new draft for her. Then the director of your program sends you a diplomatic email that says you should consider sending a proposal in to some agency, which is just code that if you don't, he might be kicking you out. It's ok. You can do it. At least it would be, if this work machine the university provided you with didn't start acting up.

Trash: A Story of Uncertainty is a game I made for Mini Ludum Dare 53, and was made during a big transition in my life. In just a month I was going to be moving to a new state, starting my second graduate program, and this was a bit the result of my own fears and self-doubt. It's a game about graduate school, meeting deadlines, vicious emails from your chair, and a general expectation of failure. Oh, and there's a time traveler from the future stuck in your machine, threatening to destroy your thesis proposal if you don't help them get home. But no one ever gets that. It's subtle. This game was heavily inspired by Christine Love's game, Digital: A Love Story.

You can play the game here (opens in a new window).

You can download the game for Windows here. (Recommended)

Trash: A Story of Uncertainty was made using GameMaker. GameMaker's web port, for some reason, renders the text as white. Consider using the Windows port if possible.